Deeplinks Blog posts about International

On Sunday, the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister David Cameron and the Interior Ministry were forced to defend a sweeping wiretapping proposal, which would aim to monitor every single email, text message, and phone call flowing through the whole country. The proposal would likely force all UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to install “black boxes” on their systems that use Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology, which would give authorities access to all communications data without a warrant or any judicial oversight.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has signed on to a joint statement with a global coalition of organizations to demand the Pakistani Ministry of Information Technology, the Information Communication Technology Research & Development Fund, and the Prime Minister, to publicly commit to stop all efforts to mandate a national Internet filtering and blocking system.

More than a year after the start of the "Arab Spring," large portions of the Middle East remain in upheaval. Even in the most stable of countries, press freedom--and by extension, online freedom--remains up for debate. We've highlighted the ongoing debate in Tunisia over online filtering, and have touched on new threats to bloggers in several countries. This week it is legislative proposals in both Iraq and Lebanon that have us on alert.

On Monday, a joint Commons and Lords committee published a report urging Google and other sites to take proactive steps to monitor their search results in order to protect the privacy of certain individuals. As a result, a committee of Parliamentary members has begun pushing for legislation to force search engines and social networks to censor themselves. The committee, set up by the prime minister, arose out of increasing controversies and injunctions to protect people’s online image.